Gundam Build Fighters ZZ
by Argeus the Paladin
Summary: The Neath changes. The Neath welcomes. The Neath gives opportunities to the willful and crafty and unscrupulous. This is the story of Iori Sei - and the story of the Neath and its gallivanting with the Gunpla culture. And, of course, as is all things in the Neath, what lies beyond the surface: "Field Sixteen. Sunless Sea."


**First and foremost, some initial disclaimers/general notice:**

1) **All disclaimers apply:** Gundam of all makes and kinds are the property of Bandai Namco. The Echo Bazaar/Fallen London universe belongs to Failbetter Games. I own little more than the words I write.  
2) This fic is meant for Gundam fans, under the assumption that they know very little (or nothing) about the Fallen London/Echo Bazaar universe.

3) The "ZZ" part stands for " **Z** unless **Z** ee" (Sunless Sea) or " **Z** ee- **z** tory" while referring to Double Zeta at the same time. (The former is a bit forced: "Sunless" is never spelled with a Z in the Fallen London universe)

 *******

 **PROLOGUE**

 **太陽がありない海**

 **(A SEA WITHOUT SUN)**

It was a sea battle of a sort unseen since the British Admiralty last took to war two centuries before.

Water splashed. Cannons roared. The false-stars blink upon the dome above. Upon the sunless sea, old-school cannonballs and cutting-edge particle beams were ripping through the darkness, drowning beneath them the silent, ever-present melody of the Neath.

On one side lined up the best and finest of the Earth Federation fleet: a dozen _Argama_ -class, tens of _Salamis_ -class, an array of _Magellan_ -class bristling with missiles and particle beams; and of course the prides of the fleet: three _Archangel_ -class circling around a single _Ptolemaios_ -class, each sortieing their own complement of mobile suits. A cloud of mobile suits trailed behind, above and around the fleet, their exhaust blazing like veritable shooting stars. There were mobile armors too, both conventional and experimental, and once every so often hyper-beams would lance forth from behind the formation.

On the other... well, there were countless wonders and horrors of the Zee. Giant angler crabs and Behemoustaches, each the size of a Gaw. Giant sharks and albino morays, bound and tortured, larger than a missile frigate each and infinitely fiercer. Oar-galleys manned by Unfinished Clay-men who never stopped and never surrendered. Battleships hailing from the Iron Republic where no law of man or nature hold sway. A small fleet of _Alcaeus_ -class frigates flying the banner of the Pirate Poet. War-barges entirely crewed by tiny talking rats. Spiny Lorn-flukes, soaked in the color of forgetfulness. A screen of Lifebergs, animate icebergs with a taste for the flesh of drowned zailors. In the middle of the fleet rose the Tree of Ages: a spider-shaped mega-battleship, the pride of the spider-haven of Savior's Rock.

And in the launch-bay of the _Archangel_ , in his Gundam cockpit, Iori Sei had his hands on the controls. His blood pumped with adrenaline as the PA roared around him.

 _"Glorious Dreadnaughts straight ahead! Distance thirty hundred meters!"_

 _"All crews cover your ears! Incoming Tree of Life! Shoot the damned spiders down!"_

 _"Lorn-flukes! Lorn-Flukes on the horizon! Earmuffs, earmuffs!"_

A honey-sweet voice, like a nightingale's song – or an angel's – cut through the shouting and screaming of orders. _"This is the Archangel! All units, commence attack!"_

Sei seized the joystick tight in his palm. "Alright! These things don't scare me! With this Gundam, nothing can scare me!"

Flick, flick, click. Pull.

"Iori Sei, Build Strike Freedom, launching!"

The turbines spun. The wings spread. The engines blazed. His beam rifle was handy and all charged. A single sweat-bead trickled down the forehead.

The first few minutes of combat passed by in a blur. Sei dodged a giant angler crab's charge. A beam flashed from his gun's muzzle, drilling through the beast's carapace and sending it to the bottom of the ocean. He turned around just in time to dodge a flensing shot from a Glorious Dreadnaught at the end of its turn-cycle.

Just then a giant Tyrant Moth flew by, its wings spread large and wide, its mandible aimed at the Strike Freedom.

"Not gonna let you do that!" cried Sei. "Go, DRAGOON System!"

A dozen DRAGOON pods detached themselves from the wings' underside. They flew around the Tyrant Moth: the creature could barely manage a " _kree_ " before several dozen green beams lanced through it from all angles and sent it down, down, down, down. It hit the surface with a huge splash and was no more.

On his left, a bound-shark had jumped into the air, biting a Strike Dagger cross the torso and dragged it screaming and thrashing down the deep black. An Acguy was diving down the Zee on his right side, wrestling with a moray – it nailed the beast in the head with a beam cutter. Screams and gunshots echoed from the communications bridge of a Lepanto – as if the crews have gone insane in mid-battle. A Lorn-Fluke took a direct hit that ripped through it spiky body, spilling irrigo fluid everywhere as it sank into the black zee.

It was, all told, a fairly even battle. A battle to be turned by the heart of his Gundam!

So Sei was just about to turn up the throttle when his communicator switched itself on. "Sei, watch out!"

A face so familiar appeared on the communicator. Sei gasped. _Could it be..._ "Father?"

Indeed it was Iori Takeshi's face on the screen, twisted and bewildered in unspeakable horror. "That... that is no Lifeberg! No Lifeberg, son! That's... That's Mount Nomad!"

"M-Mount Nomad? The... the Mountain that Eats Ships?"

At once the sea quaked, trembled and shifted. Then it split apart, like an enormous black egg hatching a monster. There, before the Earth Federation fleet's horrified eyes, a mountain black as the night, rose and crackled, glassy and jagged and crystalline and immeasurably enormous, like a titan among men.

The first thing the mountain did was ramming the vessel nearest to it. Which happened to be an Argama-class assault carrier. It went down in a single thundering _crash_.

Then the mountain turned to the rest of the fleet. Its faceless visage seemed like it was glaring at the Strike Freedom, like a giant at an ant. Such comparison was no overstatement: The great mountain was floating and splashing like a space fortress upon the waves, black and jagged and hateful beyond measures. Its surface was dotted and pockmarked with so many holes and cracks. Mount Nomad wore all of those wounds upon its ebony visage like an old soldier parading so many medals.

Shots rang out. Beams flashed. Missiles swarmed at the mountain's general direction like a horde of angry hornets. Explosions lit up the sea as if the sun had risen for good in the Neath.

When the light faded, the particles fell and the smoke settled, the mountain stood there still. Its face was slightly scratched, but that was all the barrage managed to accomplish.

 _"A-all units, pull back!"_

The order came too late, for just then the mountain began glowing.

The mountain's deep root stirred and turned in the darkness. The air cracked. The swarms of bats circling its peak squeaked; a few lesser specimens plummeted to their frozen tomb beneath the black waves.

From its tip to its base emerged sigils, black and red and burning in cold-flame: shapes too arcane, too inhuman, too unfathomably cosmic for any mortal mind to comprehend. The air froze, then expanded all too quickly. The sigils expanded, in a ring of wilting force that carried with it the keening scream of ten thousand souls drowned underneath the merciless wave.

 _No... not wailing... this is... This is the language spoken by the stars!_

Warning lights blinked and flashed around Sei, as did the alarms howl. There was no time for panic or ponder. The blazing sigils were upon him, and before his hands could hit the eject button, flames had filled the cockpit.

"AAAAAIIIEEE!"

The last thing Sei saw was a huge explosion all around him, searing him to the bone and leaving nothing behind.

And so Iori Sei was no more... at least until he jerked up in horror. The back of his head hit the lamp-shade with a clonk.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch." Sei turned his eyes up at the open laptop on his table. "Oh. I... kind of left the computer on last night..."

The video playing back was appropriately titled, _"Shocking! Rare footage of Mount Nomad, Recorded By the SDF!"_ Sei shuddered, and shut down the browser without a single glance at the video. The faint howling he could hear in that once second of delay was enough to give him chills for the day.

He took a deep breath, nursed the bruise with one hand, and stretched out the other. He looked outside the window: the bats fluttering outside had thinned. It was the only sign of the new day: it was, after all, hard to tell when one day ended and another began down here in the Neath where the sun did not shine.

It was a frightening, unfathomable world, cloaked in darkness and punctuated by bat-wing flapping. It was a world where walked tomb-colonists who had lived far too long; where stalked Drownies who couldn't decide if they were alive or dead; where talking tigers dwelled and soul-stealing monkeys frolicked. It was a world presided by mysterious Masters and soul-thirsty bee-devils. It was a world of defied laws of nature: where the only true law was that all laws could be bent and broken.

But it was his world.

Perhaps the plastic models on Sei's table could not change the world into a more optimistic place. But there, upon the wings of the Build Strike Gundam he was crafting, there was a dream taking shape.

And where there was dream, there was hope, be there the sun or otherwise.

 **Notes and Fanon:**  
\- This chapter serves two purpose: it mirrors GBF's opening roll, and provides a short introduction of the Neath - the world miles beneath the ground of the Fallen London setting.  
\- Mount Nomad is, all told, exactly as powerful as I'm showing here. For starters, she/it is the daughter of a mountain-goddess and the universe's equivalent of Predator, and the grand-daughter of _the Sun_. Hers/its signature attack is a burst of Correspondence - the language of the stars that makes everything kind of explode, so to speak. I'm pretty sure she/it can put up a solid fight against pretty much all non-hax real robot and even some Supers that aren't named Mazinger, Getter, Demonbane, (Neo) Granzon, Ideon or TTGL. For those who are familiar with Super Robot Wars, think of it as a mountain that can use God Voice as a MAP attack like Cyflash virtually infinitely.


End file.
